India on its mind, Microsoft to house a cloud unit within big IT cos

New Delhi: Microsoft is pushing ahead with a strategy to create a separate business unit within large IT companies, in a drive to accelerate its India business.

Called the ITeS 360 solution, the business unit helps IT companies in selling the entire stack of Microsoft offerings – ranging from artificial intelligence solutions to business applications – over the cloud to their customers who may be spread across the globe.

The business unit leader housed inside an IT company will ensure that the local Microsoft office in that particular location helps rolling out the solution, Microsoft India president Anant Maheshwari told in an interview. This is a major overhaul in terms of strategy, under which the local Microsoft official would only be concerned with sales at the India operations.

The country’s largest software services firm, Tata Consultancy Services, and the third largest HCL Technologies are some of the players that have already partnered with Microsoft on this initiative.

Maheshwari said this was part of the “One Microsoft” strategy, which was a brainchild of chief executive Satya Nadella. The Microsoft CEO is expected to visit India later this month, the US-based company said.

Maheshwari said Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing service is really on a high growth clip in India, and nearly “doubled” in 2019. The company is now moving forward to deploying new business models in India and one of these is IteS 360.

“(The Indian) IT (industry) is today roughly a $180 billion industry. There is a significant value that they can provide in driving cloud solutions as part of this $180 billion. That’s what they’re doing when they go and drive digital transformation in different parts of the world,” he said. “They need cloud solutions and Microsoft is able to provide them with not just cloud solutions, but also with very significant value adds like data, artificial intelligence, modern workplace solutions like business applications, etc.”

Maheshwari said there was no real scale that existed in the companies earlier, “but they have now understood the power of the go-to-market that we provide around the world”. For instance, one of the largest IT companies in India could be in 10 different geographies and wants to call on 15 different customers. In every one of those geographies, a local Microsoft person works with them to go and address the business problem together, he said.